


A Postmortem Education

by RushingHeadlong



Series: October Drabbles [2]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Dissection, Gen, Introspection, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27163177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RushingHeadlong/pseuds/RushingHeadlong
Summary: Roger muses on an unexpected part of his coursework.
Series: October Drabbles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1982713
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	A Postmortem Education

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the story from Queen in Cornwall about Roger dissecting human cadavers as part of his dentistry degree, which sounded absolutely fake to me until some research revealed that, yes, dentistry majors do in fact have to do this.

They all had been warned about it when they first enrolled as dentistry majors. Dissections were mandatory for all students, without exception, and Roger thought he had been prepared for that. He’d dissected frogs and sheep hearts in biology classes before, after all. Even if they threw a cat at him, he was sure that he could handle it. 

But he wasn’t quite expecting to walk into his first anatomy lesson to find that they’d be dissecting human cadavers instead. 

Roger takes a drag off his cigarette and holds it for a moment, feeling the smoke burn at his lungs before he exhales it out slowly. It’s not that it really bothers him to be working on a human, although maybe it should. The body that he helped cut into today had been a person, with family and friends and a life that Roger hopes was a happy one, but all of that is gone now. Now the person is just a nameless cadaver, their face kept covered to prevent accidental identification by any of the students who are tasked with slicing through muscle and cracking open bones in their quest for knowledge.

Maybe it’s that anonymity that’s left Roger feeling disquieted. It doesn’t matter who this cadaver once belonged to, where they came from or what they did for a living or even if they left behind loved ones to miss them now that they’re gone. All that matters now is what their body can teach them.

The hand that isn’t holding his cigarette comes up to rub at his shoulder and the heel of his palm just presses into the top of Roger’s collarbone. The professor had had them all trace the incision lines along their own torsos first as he walked them through the steps, an entire laboratory of students pressing their fingers into the dip where their collarbones meet and then down their sternums and finally outward along their lowest ribs. 

Roger wonders if his cadaver had any medical training. If he had ever tiptoed his fingers down his torso, counting his own ribs and remembering what it looked like the first time he saw inside a human being’s chest. If he too was surprised by how easy it was to cut into a body, but how much effort it took to peel back the layers of skin. 

Roger wonders if some day someone will struggle to open up his own chest like that.

He finishes off his cigarette and flicks the butt away. A simple enough gesture, but one involving a precise interplay between bones and tendons and muscles and nerves. Dozens of delicate structures, protected by only the thinnest layer of skin and fat, coming together to allow for a range of movements, from discarding a cigarette to pulling open a chest cavity. 

Roger shakes his head, as if trying to dislodge those morbid thoughts from his mind, and sets off towards Imperial College. He’s needed at band rehearsal, and after today he’s quite sure that he’s more cut out for music than for the sciences.


End file.
